The book Better Buses Better Cities by Stephen Higashide gave me the tools to articulate exactly what I want from the city I live in. When I moved back to Chicago, my neighborhood felt different. Previously it had been a launching pad to the rest of the city. Now, I felt confined.

Post-COVID, a financially strained CTA was forced to cut service, running far fewer buses and trains. Waiting forever for the bus can be maddening, but when I told friends this made me feel less free than I was while living abroad, they were confused. Learning the phrase “frequency is freedom” from Higashide’s book helped me explain just how I felt and the lifestyle I missed. With transit networks, rate of service often matters more than speed of service. That is, how often the bus comes can affect your access to your city more than how fast the bus can drive from stop to stop. This is why I still felt hemmed in even after the city established bus-only lanes near my apartment.

Frustrated, but inspired, I set out to map my new city. I used OSMNX to get walking networks of the city, the CTA’s GTFS data to derive travel times, and NetworkX to calculate isochrones for varying transit schedules. I built the site in Streamlit, which I’ve come to rely upon quite a bit for how quickly it helps me make my work interactive.

This work was validating. I saw on the map in front of me exactly what I experienced every day: might as well walk to the 20 minutes to the train. Waiting for the bus won’t make any difference. But it also inspired me to get more involved in Chicago’s transit activism scene. As measured here, little things can make a difference.